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Summary:

"From the best-selling author of Into the Raging Sea comes a moving and eye-opening look at the story of manufacturing in America, whether it can ever successfully return to our shores, and why doing so is vital to our well-being as a nation, told through the experience of one young couple in Maine as they attempt to rebuild a lost industry, ethically. Ben and Whitney Waxman are two tireless idealists trying to do the impossible: make an American-made, union-made, all American-sourced sweatshirt. Ben spent a decade in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin fighting for working men and women at a time when national support for unions had sunk to an all-time low. Paralyzed by depression and a drug addiction, Ben lands back in his hometown of Portland, Maine, forced to rebuild his life from scratch. There, he meets Whitney, a bartender wrestling with her own troubled past. In each other, they see a better future, a version of the American dream they can build together. The Waxmans' quest will take us across the nation and across time, from the cotton fields of Mississippi to New York City's hollowed-out garment district to a family-owned zipper company in Los Angeles to the enormous knit-and-dye factories in North Carolina. Tracing the life of a hoodie from the cotton fields to the sewing machine to the convention floor. It will also take us through the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and what this means for the future of American manufacturing. American Hoodie offers a fascinating take on global politics, trade, economics, ethics, and industrial history told through textiles. Woven through the Waxmans' story is the essential history of textiles and its critical role in shaping capitalism. It was the demand for cheap cloth that sparked the industrial revolution, and it was the brutality of the textile industry that first drove workers to organize. American Hoodie is a deeply personal account of how politics and economics shape all of us. Each touchpoint casts a rare, compassionate look at what came before, where we are now, and where we're going-through the people, places, and ecologies that produce the fabric of our lives"-- [Provided by publisher]

Table of Contents:

• Preamble: The traffic jam that never ends
• Introduction: The high cost of cheap stuff
• Maine roots
• The kid is okay
• Greed is a real thing
• Witness
• She's outta your league
• Reboot
• Let's make something
• Game on
• New Americans
• a brief history of the hoodie
• Just pull it and it's done
• 54 operations
• Can you make 5000?
• The fabric king of 38th Street
• Follow the river
• It takes Chutzpah
• Pandemic panic along Route 66
• We'll come back

• We gotta shut up and listen
• An omen
• Cornering the cotton market
• Labor pains
• Your job is to produce
• The never-ending quest for smart money
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Index.

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Author/Creator:

Slade, Rachel , author

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

Making it in America: the almost impossible quest to manufacture in the U.S.A. (and how it got that way) [by Slade, R.]

Other Related Resources:

Online version: American hoodie [by Slade, R.] (New York : Pantheon Books, [2024] — ISBN 9780593316894; LCCN 2023009053)

Subjects:

Textile industry — United States — History

Clothing trade — United States — History

Free trade — History

Labor unions — United States — History

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-317) and index.
Description based on print version record.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Call Numbers:

HD9855 .S53 2024eb

ISBNs:

9780593316894 (electronic bk.)
0593316894 (electronic bk.)
9780593316887 [Invalid]
0593316886 [Invalid]

OCLC Numbers:

1416981266

Other Control Numbers:

3537584 (source: EbpS)
[Unknown Type]: ybp305909355